CANTO in. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. 87 



Pleased Fawns and Naiads crowd in silent rings, 

 And hovering Cupids stretch their purple wings. 



II. " FIRST the new actions of the excited sense, 

 Urged by appulses from without, commence; 

 With these exertions pain or pleasure springs, 

 And forms perceptions of external things. 

 Thus, when illumined by the solar beams, 

 Yon waving woods, green lawns, and sparkling streams, 

 In one bright point by rays converging lie 6l 



Plann'd on the moving tablet of the eye ; 

 The mind obeys the silver goads of light, 

 And IRRITATION moves the nerves of sight. 



And Irritation moves, 1. 64. Irritation is an exertion or change of 

 some extreme part of the sensorium residing in the muscles or organs 

 of sense in consequence of the appulses of external bodies. The 

 word perception includes hoth the action of the organ of sense in 

 consequence of the impact of external objects and our attention to 

 that action; that is, it expresses both the motion of the organ of 

 sense, or idea, and the pain or pleasure that succeeds or accompanies 

 it. Irritative ideas are those which are preceded by irritation, which 

 is excited by objects external to the organs of sense: as the idea of 

 that tree, which either I attend to, or which I shun in walking near 

 it without attention. In the former case it is termed perception, in 

 the latter it is termed simply an irritative idea. 



